Light inflaton model in a metastable Universe
Abstract
We minimally extend the SM with a Z symmetric potential containing a single scalar field, serving as our inflaton with a quartic self-coupling. In the model we have symmetry breaking in both sectors, and with the addition of an inflaton-Higgs portal, the Universe is able to efficiently reheat via 2-2 inflaton-Higgs scattering. Assuming that the Universe with a positive cosmological constant should be metastable, only one particular symmetry breaking pattern in the vacuum is possible, without the need to finely-tune the Higgs' quartic self-coupling. Inflaton with masses in the range and mixing angles that span evade all current cosmological, experimental and stability constraints required for a metastable EW vacuum. Upgraded particle physics experiments may be able to probe the parameter space with , where we would observe trilinear Higgs couplings suppressed by up to compared to the SM value. However to access the parameter space of very weakly-coupled inflaton, we rely on the proposals to build experiments that target the hidden sector.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2108.02540,
title = {Light inflaton model in a metastable Universe},
author = {Fedor Bezrukov and Abigail Keats},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.02540},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
22 pages, 2 figures Version accepted in PRD, improved plots